Students cry as fire destroys HSC works

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Students who had been celebrating their last trial Higher School
Certificate exam wept as they watched their school being destroyed
in a multimillion-dollar fire believed to have been deliberately
lit.

Their major HSC art and design works, which had taken hundreds
of hours to complete on canvas and in wood and metal, also went up
in the fire at Kelso High School near Bathurst. One student lost 30
art works in the fire.

More than 100 firefighters called in from as far away the Blue
Mountains and Sydney fought for four hours to control the
blaze.

Police yesterday declared the smouldering site a crime scene and
investigators were trying to find the cause of the fire, which
students believed started somewhere near the gymnasium at about
8.30pm on Friday.

The Education Department is looking at ways to house the 730
students, particularly those doing the HSC.

School captain Alex Hausfeld was still in tears yesterday. She
lost her major art work done in metal.

She said all that remained were memories of the years spent at
Kelso High.

"We had our last pretrial exam Friday morning and we were
celebrating yesterday until we heard the school was on fire," she
said. "We came here and just stood and cried. We watched the flames
and the big fireballs until about 11.30pm."

Ms Hausfeld said it looked like the gymnasium was on fire first
but the flames were everywhere.

School leadership team member Amanda George said watching her
friends cry was devastating.

"You go to school five days a week and it becomes like a second
home," she said. "Rumours are going around that someone started it
but I'm hoping it was an accident, like a heater left on or
something, because I don't know how they could do a thing like that
to our school."

Regional director for education Carole McDiarmid said:

"We are working through strategies to look after our students
and some good news was that all of the school's data and assessment
material has been stored off-site, so we still have that.

"The Board of Studies is coming here [tomorrow] to work with the
students over the loss of their major pieces; there will be no
disadvantage to them.

"Hallmark programs of Kelso High, the Rock Eisteddfod and Circus
Surreal, will still go on because costumes were saved."